I’m not offering this as an application for a gig with the Mitt Romney Is A Bad, Bad, Nasty Man Gazette (which seems at pretty much full employment these days, anyhow), but after I wrote this piece upon the unveiling of MittCare last year I was invited to appear on a Boston newscast as part of a panel of skeptics. As was made clear to me in the breathtakingly rude lectures I was subjected to both in the “green room” and on-air by my fellow guests, the left-wing saw MittCare much as I imagine they’ll see Hillary’s new plan: A necessary, hopefully short-lived Trojan horse to carry universality through the city gates and create the crisis that will send the populace into the arms of single-payer.

As mandates allow insurance companies to drive up cost without fear of losing now-captive consumers, the still-bankrupt arguments in favor of a government-run system are nevertheless sure to receive a more sympathetic hearing. The government demands, the hoi polloi is supposed to think, why shouldn’t it pay? Even the left-wing guests’ requisite feigned fury at Romney could hardly mask their glee at the opportunity that had been handed them. The so-called compromise Mitt signed onto–even though he knew he would not be in the Governor’s office to trim the excesses of an overwhelmingly liberal state house–is now something he and, to a lesser degree, all Republicans will get shellacked with every time they try to criticize Democrats’ calls for increased regulation in health care and beyond. Some of them-aside from Huckabee, our favorite God-fearing socialist with the goofy smile and aw shucks! attitude-actually might not even deserve it, which is to say MittCare did no one who cares about individual autonomy and limited government any favors, least of all Romney. The plan’s enablers over at Heritage Foundation should be hanging their heads in shame, as well.

I know much of this is retracing the footsteps of my AmSpec colleagues’ well-beaten path. My point is that the most damnable offence here isn’t how MittCare turned out, but the boon the left recognized it would be from a time Romney has taken great pains to assure us all he now understands…the moment of conception.